Re: Platonism

From: David Longley (David_at_longley.demon.co.uk)
Date: 11/29/04 

Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 21:46:16 +0000

In article <10qn461j4b09p7e@news20.forteinc.com>, Stargazer
<fuckoff@spammers.com> writes
>j q st martin wrote:
>> > > > Platonists, believing that effective mathematics is discovered,
>> > > > not invented, and that it is the real world which approximates
>> > > > the ideal.
>>
>> I'm a math student, and reading this thread I'm trying to figure out
>> if I'm a Platonist. Maybe somebody can define a few things for me.
>> What does it mean to discover something versus to invent something?
>> What is a mathematical object? What does it mean for a mathematical
>> object to be real?
>
>You would be a platonist if you believe that reality is only a pale
>shadow of an unobservable (but "existent") world where everything
>is "perfect" (read: explainable by a consistent and complete set of
>non-random rules). If you feel that are a platonist, then I would
>urge you to reconsider.
>
>*SG*
>
>
All anyone is doing when they use terms like "platonism" is telling
others that they don't know how "philosophy" diversified into the
sciences about four hundred years ago, and that once it did, it took a
further four hundred befuddled years to get it clear that this
inevitably signalled the end of "philosophy" in favour of pursuit of
empirical truths as an unending quest for better prediction and
management of the stimulation of our sensory surfaces. All of this is
done from the extensional stance.

This has nothing to do with homeric gods, monotheistic deities, the
unveiling of some noumenal reality by mathematicians or the mind by
metaphysicians such as Kant or "cognitive scientists". Nor is there any
such thing as "AI" as mentalists think of it.

Instead, it comes down to a far more mundane fact. We have to make our
way in the world, and we have to learn how to do that through (usually
painful) experience. To say this four hundred years ago would be
considered heresy, to say it in Plato's day it would (for most folk (who
were illiterate) would have been incomprehensible and far too
frightening (as most thinking is covert verbal behaviour). Even a
century or so ago it was so painful that Darwin delayed publishing what
he had to say for 20 years (and was only goaded into doing so through
the threat of someone else stealing his thunder). Today we have our own
pressures like political correctness which since the second world war
has driven a lot of good science underground through the quite
irrational responses of today's idiots.

Learn some behaviour analysis and wake up as that's what epistemology
comes down to. Many people already know this and are, like it or not,
using it to manage people. If you don't wise up to this, chances are
that others will manage you. 

-- 
David Longley
http://www.longley.demon.co.uk/Frag.htm
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